On April 10, 1999, I used to be within the producer’s chair in Studio 4 in RTÉ whereas we aired a particular episode of a stay Saturday evening chat present referred to as Kenny Reside, hosted by Pat Kenny.
The present was paying its respects to the late actor and comic, Dermot Morgan, who died unexpectedly the earlier yr on the age of 45. At which level the Dublin-born Morgan was on the cusp of a significant profession breakthrough: regardless of his profile in Eire, he’d solely not too long ago began to draw consideration elsewhere. A consequence, principally, of his work on the Channel 4 comedy collection, Father Ted, through which he took the lead function.
That Kenny Reside tribute featured members of Dermot’s household, his pals, associates and former colleagues in Irish and British tv and radio and was the brainchild of Pat Kenny himself, a detailed buddy of Morgan’s. It was assembled from the floorboards up by one of many present’s many unsung employee bees, Nita Byrne, who sourced a superb line up and who, for her troubles, suffered the slings that invariably accompany such endeavours.
So long as I’ve identified him, Pat Kenny has been a eager supporter of recent music – and specifically new Irish music – and I’ve referred to this in a number of items right here beforehand. A one-time guitar-slinging folkie, his decades-long profession in radio and tv is distinguished by many issues, one among them being the quite a few rising bands and musicians he has platformed in high-profile broadcast slots.
Pat has all the time seen the worth in all music, particularly rock music. And for all of the criticism levelled at him all through the years – a lot of it unfounded and disproportionate – he has persistently given airtime to fledgling expertise when he both didn’t must or when he might merely have gone with far drearier materials as an alternative.
Among the many friends who contributed to that Dermot Morgan tribute have been the creators and writers of Father Ted, Arthur Mathews and Graham Linehan, and the director of the collection, the previous RTÉ staffer, Declan Lowney. Neil Hannon, performing beneath cowl of a band title, The Divine Comedy, supplied a beautiful interlude when he performed a stay model of the Father Ted theme, ‘Songs of Love’. The tune seems on Hannon’s breakthrough 1996 elpee, ‘Casanova’, which was launched on Setanta Data.
Additionally taking the boards that evening was one other Irish songwriter and musician hiding behind a band alias: Ken Sweeney who, then as now, writes and information as Brian. A buddy of the Father Ted writers, Brian launched its first album, ‘Perceive’, on the identical Setanta label in 1992, the fourth long-player in that firm’s positive catalogue. It was due to my work on the label that I first encountered Ken and I’ve written about our relationship, and about his band’s exploits, in a earlier piece right here.
After I say that Ken saved my life I’m not taking part in it for laughs. I’d by no means even met him when he selflessly moved me out of a squat on the North Peckham Property – that I shared very briefly with a drug-crazed Scotsman – and onto a sofa in his rented suburban semi in leafy Ealing. The metaphors can write themselves however suffice to say that I’ll all the time be grateful.
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Take heed to Brian’s debut album Perceive
It took Brian an eternity to finish a follow-up album: in one of the best traditions of one among Ken’s favorite teams, The Blue Nile, ‘Convey Bother’ lastly noticed the sunshine in early 1999. Throughout that lengthy hiatus between chapters, Ken had returned to Eire and a profession in journalism. He’d starred as an additional in an episode of the second collection of Father Ted, ‘New Jack Metropolis’, through which one other lamented Irish comic and musician, Brendan Grace, performs Father Fintan Stack. Ken additionally options briefly – alongside Brian Eno – within the final ever episode of the Father Ted collection, ‘Going to America’.
We took the leisure bookings on Kenny Reside actually critically. Dwelling within the shadow of the longer-running Late Late Present, it was one space the place the group felt we had a constant benefit over our rivals within the workplace subsequent door. These slots have been booked by one other stalwart, Caroline Henry, a formidable presence on the music beat right here and elsewhere. So though he wasn’t au fait with both of the Brian albums, all Pat Kenny actually wanted to know was that Caroline and myself rated them and that we noticed actual worth and goal in having the band on the present.
And on that time the three of us have been all the time advert idim. The nationwide broadcaster has an obligation and duty to assist new and rising expertise nonetheless and wherever doable, particularly within the realm of music and efficiency. And particularly so on its most-watched and most listened to output.
And so, to Brian who, on the evening, starred Ken alongside a handful of hardy shape-throwers – amongst them the good Pat Dillon behind the traps – as they opened Half Three of the Dermot Morgan tribute. Like an indie-cut Touring Wilburys, they carried out ‘Flip Your Lights On’, one of many stand-out cuts from ‘Convey Bother’, Ken giving us a terrific stay vocal efficiency because the band mimed to a backing observe.
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Take heed to Brian’s second album Convey Bother
It had been an attention-grabbing sufficient seven years. Again in 1992, Ken and I had fetched up in that exact same studio constructing as leaner, extra critical however far much less worldly-wise younger males. As a part of a necklace of various jobs I did on the time, I operated Setanta’s in-house publicity machine: I performed Scooter to the label’s proprietor and founder, Keith Cullen’s Kermit, principally. And it was in that guise that I’d snared a slot for Ken on the wonderful Nighthawks strand, a stay late-night revue on RTÉ produced then by an previous mentor of mine, Philip Kampff.
Ken and I had lined up every week of media engagements in Eire in assist of the discharge of ‘Perceive’. As with virtually each single Setanta launch, we had no scarcity of assist from shops again residence: anybody we rated needed a chunk of Brian.
We accomplished as many radio and print interviews as time would enable us throughout a memorable few days again with our households, a visit on which I noticed, but once more, how partaking a story-teller Ken may very well be. Nighthawks, a politically charged tradition present that went out a few occasions each week on RTÉ2, was going to high a stable week’s work. Which it did. Ultimately.
The Nighthawks producers cherished the fragility and candour that runs via ‘Perceive’ and booked us on that foundation. And we obtained to that time in the long run, however solely after a frantic, on-the-spot re-writing of the digital camera script, throughout which Ken’s backing band was deemed surplus to necessities and banished into the wings.
So as an alternative, our hero did what he does higher than most and, with the barest of accompaniment on his personal acoustic guitar, poured his coronary heart right into a staller efficiency of two delicate Brian numbers. You possibly can have really shot the factor utilizing an previous tin can with photographic paper wrapped inside and it wouldn’t have detracted from the facility, so visceral was Ken’s supply.
I watched that recording at shut quarters from the studio ground and I used to be reminded of lots of the conversations I’d loved with Ken, late at evening, in entrance of the raked ashes within the good room again in Ealing.
When, after days spent on the slog on totally different sides of London we’d get the kettle on and pore over our favorite sons: Mark Mulcahy of Miracle Legion, Hinterland, Paul Buchanan from The Blue Nile, East River Pipe and something on the Sarah Data imprint, a Bristol-based label whose stuff we each adored. And people nights helped us, if to not make sense of our lot, then to definitely wade via the anxiousness and the penury that undercut quite a lot of it.
London is an impressive metropolis, nevertheless it may very well be a wretchedly chilly home too, particularly for these of us simply cluelessly attempting to get by on our wits. ‘Perceive’ was one other uncommon piece of paradise that helped to maintain us as we went.
The second Brian elpee, ‘Convey Bother’, was a much more tough affair and there have been a number of occasions when Setanta thought it could by no means land. However then Ken all the time boxed southpaw and was by no means going to be outlined by orthodoxy, and definitely not by what he dedicated to wax. He was a loyal and passionate fan of music – to his detriment, he’d commonly huge up the work of others at his personal expense in interviews – however he noticed a far larger and extra nuanced world too.
However when his head was within the recreation he was as obsessive and clear-eyed as any and, wanting again at that physique of labor at a distance, I’m not stunned at how effectively its stood up.
Nestling simply after ‘Perceive’ in that slip-think canon, is my very own favorite clutch of Brian materials: a four-song 1992 EP referred to as ‘Planes’. Produced by Ian Catt – who had beforehand completed time with Saint Etienne – it snaps Ken’s two very distinct faces: the title minimize and ‘The World Ended with You’ seize the brittle, barely-breathing Brian. ‘Understanding’ and ‘She Takes You Away’ – for me, Ken’s greatest ever tune – simply go within the different course, proper on the throat and absolute on power-drive.
Each ‘Perceive’ and ‘Planes’ have been launched throughout a daily swell season at Setanta. One other band managed by the label, The Frank and Walters, had been licenced out to a significant and have been flush with the chart success of a timeless single, ‘After All’. Dublin band A Home have been re-drawn, re-invented and re-born off the again of their ‘I Am The Biggest’ elpee whereas one other longer-term resident, Neil Hannon of The Divine Comedy, was about to comply with swimsuit and return to the fold after a fairly drastic glow-up.
And you could possibly learn all about it too: in Britain, the label loved the identical extent of constructive press and media because it did in Eire. A testomony, I feel, to the standard of its output because it was to the knacky media methods employed by Setanta and its redoubtable impartial handler, Alan James.
One in every of Ken’s earliest champions was an rising younger author at Melody Maker journal, not too long ago landed into London: Peter Paphides.
Alongside the likes of Andrew Mueller, Bob Stanley and Jim Arundel, his body of reference ran wider and significantly extra catholic than many of the different writers – myself included – whose work adorned the paper each week. He was courageous with it too at a time when it was neither trendy nor worthwhile to step exterior the gang refrain.
Pete went on to jot down about music and tradition for Time Out journal after which subsequently onto many different notable adventures in journalism and past – however his affection for Ken, and for Ken’s materials, has by no means waned. He launched his personal label – Needle Mythology – again in 2019, ostensibly a home of redemption and reflection for under-regarded information and its catalogue already reads like a coalition of the criminally ignored. A succession of information blighted, upon their authentic launch, by company malpractice, poor timing and a warped sense of the zeitgeist. And all of which, in a extra equitable essential court docket, have now been granted clemency.
Having re-licenced and re-issued terrific albums from, amongst others, The Lilac Time, Robert Forster, The Finn Brothers and Whipping Boy, Pete has now educated his sights on Brian. And it’s straightforward sufficient to see why: Ken ticks all the label’s standards.
‘Understood’ – a compound of ‘Perceive’ and the ‘Planes’ EP – is the newest addition to the Needle Mythology household. And, as such, it affords these of us who have been there on the time to re-acquaint ourselves with the magic. To those that missed out, it’s an opportunity to listen to the enduring attraction of one other more and more scarce commodity: authenticity.
I’d speak to Ken commonly about his songwriting and I’d marvel why he wasn’t as prolific as among the different artists at Setanta. It is an attention-grabbing place, the songwriter’s worry of the tune. And he’d inform me – like he’s nonetheless telling others – that he solely ever wrote songs when he felt he had one thing legitimate he wanted to say.
Resolutely holding the road, he informed Alan Corr in a current interview for RTÉ Leisure, that: ‘I solely needed to make music that moved me emotionally and if it did not occur, I would not make information. I don’t hand over. I’ll maintain engaged on one thing for years till I get it proper’.
By any essential measure, he had it proper all these years in the past. It simply in all probability feels sweeter the second time round.
Understood by Brian is now out there through Needle Mythology
